This is the eighth installment in the franchise that is an adaptation of the Capcom and Japanese horror-inspired, video game. The franchise began in 2002 and has been a successful one and made an action star of Milla Jovovich in a landscape that was devoid of female action stars, and which still continues to be devoid of female action stars. The last Jovovich film in the series was in 2016, as the box office and critical response had gone down by that point. Sony Pictures decided to reboot the franchise with Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), which was a bit of a bomb. It had another female lead or two female leads. One of whom was a woman of color. There were a lot of reasons that the film wasn't successful, beyond the casting, or who the leads were. Yet, the franchise did start a tradition of having a female lead, but, here, director and co-writer Zach Cregger (Weapons and Barbarian), decides to break that tradition and not have a kick-ass, or bad-ass woman or strong female of color as the protagonists. Instead, he has a wimpy, white guy. Cregger's interpretation seems to be what if a young white guy, probably a proxy for himself, were dropped into the video game environment where you're not following an action star but just a regular dude.
Cregger utilizes camera work that simulates video game play. He has camera angles that are basically first-person shooter angles. Cregger wants to put the audience, in moments, into the shoes of someone dropped into this horror scenario. He wants those shoes to be the shoes of an average guy who has never held a gun or rifle before. He wants us to empathize or connect more with his protagonist because it seems like it could be us. The way that the film is structured, it can feel like a video-game world and video-game adventure where the playable character has to go from one place to another. He has a clear destination and a clear mission, and one obstacle after another is thrown in front of him. Arguably, this is the structure of a lot, if not most, action flicks, but those distinct first-person shooter angles really drive home the video-game aspect to all of this.
Austin Abrams (Weapons and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) stars as Bryan, a medical courier who is hired to deliver a package from one hospital to another. It's the middle of the night and he has to drive a snowy road through a wooded and rural area. When he encounters a woman who appears to be injured or acting weirdly, he realizes that she and others in this rural area are infected with some kind of disease or pathogen that manifests in tentacles and a H.R. Giger style monster, or even a Stan Winston style monster, a la The Thing (1982). Bryan basically becomes Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (1969) where he becomes this scared cat or scared dog running from one terrifying creature to another.
The creatures aren't exactly zombies, although at first it seems like they might be. Yet, this film does play out like a zombie flick. Cregger's feature isn't exactly in scope similar to Marc Forster's World War Z (2013) for example, but there's similar aspects. Brad Pitt's character is meant to be a kind of every-man who is thrown in an apocalyptic scenario not unlike this one, and the only hope is him being a courier for a potential cure. Brad Pitt is at the end of the day Brad Pitt. He was at one point and still is to some considered a sex symbol. He exudes a charm and confidence that comes from his decades of being a movie star. Abrams might not be considered by most to be a sex symbol, certainly not on the level of Brad Pitt, so again more people might be able to identify, empathize, or sympathize with Abrams' Bryan.
Cregger's tone here is also more comedic than one might expect. There's always been a good sense of humor, as there usually is, in the previous installments of this franchise. There are jump scares here for sure. Yet, there's a lot of comedy here too, along with the blood and gore, which is in excess. There are gruesome and heartbreaking moments that aren't funny but truly horrifying and brutal in their rather frank depictions, including the deaths of babies and children. Unlike something as The Substance (2024), I don't think that Cregger has a grander point that he's making here that makes the horrifying depictions purposeful.
While I appreciate the every-man aspect to Cregger's story, even he acknowledges the absurdity of his premise. The fact that Bryan who is a low-wage and random, medical courier works against the logic and urgency of the situation. It's revealed that an apocalyptic event is at hand. Yet, the people trying to stop it rest the survival of humanity on a random courier. Anyone with half a brain would hire a Milla Jovovich type to be the one to do Bryan's job. In fact, this film has such a character, that of Maxine, played by Kali Reis (True Detective: Night Country). I'm not arguing that she should have been the protagonist here, which would've aligned with the previous installments of the franchise, but the fact that Bryan's job wasn't entrusted to someone like her makes zero sense.
Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, and language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 30 mins.
In theaters.
